Here's our response:

Iams' announcement that by October 2006 it will no longer conduct feeding
experiments on animals in contract laboratories is a good sign that PETA's
campaign against the pet-food giant is working. While this is a small, slow
step in the right direction, we are not out of the woods yet. Iams will
continue to conduct laboratory experiments on animals, expanding its own
laboratories and doubling the number of dogs and cats confined to them.

Closed Doors = Animal Suffering
By moving all its feeding studies into its own laboratories, Iams will be
able to perform whatever experiments it wants on animals without any public
oversight―and no one will be the wiser―especially since Iams refuses to
allow PETA into its laboratories.

What's also disturbing is that Iams' welfare program states that dogs and
cats need to receive only 30 minutes of combined exercise and socialization
per day, five days a week. This means that during the week, dogs and cats
spend 23½ hours a day―and on the weekend, 24 hours a day―confined to their
cages. The dogs and cats in Iams laboratories will suffer under these
conditions.

Iams Withholds Information
Iams is withholding the fact it will still perform other laboratory
experiments on animals using outside laboratories, as it is doing at Purdue
University, where it has just given $195,140 to study muscle atrophy in
mice. The muscle atrophy is created by suspending the animals' hind limbs so
that they can't bear weight on them for a week, then killing them.

Another is its study at Auburn University involving impregnating 60 female
beagles. According to Iams and P&G, the mother dogs are to be returned to
their "owners" (likely breeders, puppy mills, or hunters) as are their
puppies after being used in feeding studies. However, a whistleblower who
called PETA told us that the beagles were older females and that the
protocol, which she saw with her own eyes, said that the dogs would be
euthanized after the project was finished. In fact, our whistleblower had an
argument with Auburn and begged the study director to allow her to find
homes for the beagles. P&G officials dispute this claim, saying that they
have checked with Iams and Auburn alike and were "assured" that the beagles
were going back to their "owners." As if they would say anything else! The
whistleblower's call and PETA's exposure of the study may have saved the
lives of these beagles.

Iams will also continue funding chair positions at universities, giving it
access to the vivisection findings there. Often, the experiments in
physiology and other departments at universities are worse than those
conducted by Iams, resulting in the mutilation and deaths of dogs and cats
used in bone-formation experiments and other equally cruel, painful tests.

When PETA asked, through Mississippi's open records laws, for copies of
Iams-funded protocols from Mississippi State University, we were told that
we would have to pay $42,000 for the information! Iams has unscrupulous
friends everywhere, but one wonders if something particularly grotesque is
going on at MSU, as it seems that officials there are quite desperate to
keep the documentation out of our hands.

Innovative Bribery
Iams talks of the "innovative collaboration" that has occurred with the
organizations on its Animal Care Advisory Board. By "innovative
collaboration," Iams must mean its giving (or promising to give) the
American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) large sums
of money in return for its blessing on Iams' continued laboratory
experiments on animals. Both the ASPCA and the Humane Society of the United
States (HSUS) provided Iams with cover by allowing Iams to use their
organizations' names in a context that implied support. The ASPCA even sent
out a letter to all shelters in the country in support of Iams long before
Iams ever decided to stop using contract laboratories.

This "innovative collaboration" also seems to have convinced the ASPCA and
HSUS to abandon their opposition to hunting and their concern about dog and
cat overpopulation. Iams is a major supporter of hunting groups and events,
and Iams' breeding of dogs and cats to use in laboratory experiments (as in
the Auburn study) contributes to an already severe animal overpopulation
problem.

Iams admits that in-home studies work. So there is absolutely no reason why
Iams needs to continue laboratory testing on animals. Now, more than ever,
is the time for us to be vigilant and keep pushing Iams until it agrees to
end all laboratory experiments on animals. We can accept nothing less.

Please visit IamsCruelty.com regularly for the latest developments in this
campaign and for details of our nine-month investigation into Iams' cruel
experiments.

Thank you so much for all that you do to help animals!

Sincerely,

Chris Ford
Research Associate | People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)